Roses
by QuietLittleVoices
Summary: He used to buy you roses. ((Dean/Cas, End!verse, 2nd Person Cas POV))


**A/N: **Don't own anything. And I'm sorry. Please read and review?

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He died on a Thursday.

Sometimes you ponder the irony of that, seeing as Thursday was yours to protect and so was he, but then you feel the darkness settle in as you remember.

You found his body in the garden, and that's a bit ironic, too, you suppose – Lucifer killing him in a garden. And not just any garden, you know. The very last remnants of your grace, the pieces that were stuck between your ribs and left in tatters around your body, could feel it. Could feel the shimmer in the trees, the pieces of heaven that were blackened and corrupt nestled into the earth to sprout roses.

You used to love roses, how soft the petals were under your fingers, how deceptively dangerous they were, how they had a light and soft fragrance that was a perfect juxtaposition to the incense you surrounded yourself with. But now roses smell like blood and their silky petals just feel like his skin – the thorns get stuck in your fingers and you try to dig them out before you remember that they aren't real.

He used to give you roses.

When things were good, almost longer ago than you can remember, before the haze of drugs took hold, when you were both still in love. You loved him so much, you can still feel it in your bones. The feeling rests under your skin, a constant itch you can't scratch, a nagging though in the back of your mind, a question you're not sure how to ask. It's no worse, knowing that he felt the same.

Shakespeare was wrong, you know; it's not better to have loved and lost. Not when you are lost, not when the one you lost lies in bed with you every night, not when the loss kisses you and you can taste all the things that went wrong, settled in his cheeks and under his tongue. You think Vonnegut was better.

So it goes.

And so it does; it goes and goes and goes and it leaves you in a garden filled with roses and his blood on your hands. His skin was pale, more so than yours, and the blood stained both your hands and his. It got on your face and your clothes – funny how so little could cover so much. You think that it's a mercy his eyes were closed; seeing his green eyes broken and shattered in life had been hard enough in the few hours you spent without drugs in your system. You think that now, entirely sober, there's no way you could bear seeing them without his soul shining out behind them.

Even at the end of the world, the end of all things, when the darkness was all that there was for miles and miles on either side of you, his soul was the brightest thing you'd ever seen. It was all you used the last of your grace for, seeing his soul. It was ripped and blackened on the edges by hellfire, and had gaping holes out of the centre from the things he'd done, the things he'd seen, but it still shone as brightly as it had when you'd put it back in his newly-remade body.

It was the same soul that would burst with pride and love, handing you cheap, fake roses. The same soul that never learnt how to speak what he felt, the same soul that you loved with all that you had been. Sometimes that was hard to remember, when he couldn't look at you for all that you'd become, when you couldn't look at him for the same reasons.

Remembering the past was all too easy when you held a broken body in your arms. Easier when you'd loved the soul that used to inhabit it more than anything, when the smell of roses infected your mind and brought back feelings you'd thought you'd buried with pills and alcohol. Things you'd thought you'd forgotten; things you knew you could never forget, but told yourself you did.

You think you might have screamed, might have yelled and cried and pleaded, with his head in your lap and his limp hands clasped tightly in yours. You don't know for certain but when you touch your face, it's wet. It's fitting that your first tears are for him, because they'll be your last.

Time stretches immeasurably in the garden, and you feel like you've been there for years, forever, for seconds, when you finally exit with his body draped over your back. You can't go far from the building with his dead weight, so you build the pyre in the parking lot and set it alight with the matches you found in his pocket.

Watching his body go up in flames hurt more than you thought it would. It was just a body, after all – you knew that the soul was gone, and that the body meant nothing. But this was a body you'd loved, one that you'd touched and kissed and learnt almost as well as your own. One whos' fingers had pressed against your ribs and your hips and your shoulders and left marks deeper than skin. It was familiarity and tenderness, and you were turning it to ash.

You couldn't look when the flames touched his clothes, but you'd wish later that you had. You'd wish that you'd gotten one last look at his face before it was obscured by the heat and the fire. But instead, you walked away. Back to the camp, back to the cabin you'd shared with him, back to living like an echo. But now you didn't have the source of your noise, so how were you going to keep going? Echoes only last for so long before they die out, and so you know your time will come soon. It's all that keeps your eyes focused on the road ahead.

There's one word repeating itself in your mind as you drive: roses. Sitting in chipped vases in odd places, falling apart. You'd never kept good care of them, but now you wish you had, and you find yourself no longer driving towards the camp. You don't think you could bear being there, where everything had fallen apart, so you drive to Lebanon, Kansas, where things went right.

The Men of Letters' bunker still stands, as you knew that it would, and the door is unlocked, so you walk in. It's still the same as it had been when you'd left for Detroit so long ago – there are books laid out on the tables and clutter in the corners. You're not surprised at the lack of dust.

Instead of focusing on the main rooms, you walk to the bedrooms and find the one that you used to share with him. Things had been good in that room, and when you walk in, you see it. They're blackened and long dead, almost completely decomposed, but they're there. The last roses he ever gave you, before you left the bunker for the camp. You take the vase and empty it down the toilet, and then you lay down fully clothed on the unmade bed and fall asleep.

When you wake up, you're still where you were, but you're no longer alone. You don't open your eyes for fear of being wrong, but you have only one certainty left.

"Dean," you breathe, but there's no response. You open your eyes and see that it was only blankets, only sheets, but you come to the realization that maybe Shakespeare understood what he was talking about.

It's better to have loved and lost.

And so it goes.


End file.
